


(...exhibit...)

by josephina_x



Series: The Triangle Guy [7]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: ...Or is he?, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Bill isn’t Bill, Gen, Identity Issues, Post-Series, Post-Weirdmageddon, See You Next Summer, Two Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 10:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13188162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: The triangle becomes a new fixture in the Mystery Shack museum tour.





	(...exhibit...)

**Author's Note:**

> Fic: (...exhibit...)  
> Fandom: Gravity Falls  
> Pairing: n/a  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Spoilers: through the end of the series, and some of the books (Journal #3)  
> Summary: The triangle becomes a new fixture in the Mystery Shack museum tour.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit.  
> AN: In case you didn’t pick up on this from the prior fics, there are reasons why this Bill Cipher is going to come across as a bit OOC, and most of them have to do with (a) identity issues, and to a lesser degree (b) unintentional mental conditioning courtesy of Sixer during... their time together recently (...yeah, sure, let’s go with that little bit of vagueness as the explanation, there). Sorry-not-sorry.

\---

The next time that he’s startled out of the grey somewhat, it’s to something very different and unexpected.

(...and not too long after the last time, with the kids. Why is that?)

He hears noises, all sorts of noises. People noises. Quite a few, on the other side of the cloth that’s hanging over his cage.

He doesn’t understand what’s going on until he hears a muffled, “And _here_ is the elusive--”

He thinks, ‘... _Soos?_ ’, but loses the rest of the handyman’s speech in the loud rustling sound that the cloth makes as it’s abruptly pulled off of the top of the birdcage.

He’s sitting sprawled back against the bars of his cage, upright, and blinking out at the contents of a room that is not at all dark in the slightest, with his eye half-lidded. No desks or shelves or Sixer anywhere in sight.

What is in sight are a gaggle of people, staring right back at him.

Just your regular gaggle of tourists. A common and everyday, several-times-a-day, occurrence at the one, the only, Mystery Shack in Gravity Falls, Oregon, currently being run and operated by the curator, Soos Ramirez.

‘ _What are you doing, Soos?_ ’ he thinks with no small annoyance, shifting the gaze of his single eye up to the new ‘Mr. Mystery', standing to his right. Because, really? _Really?_ The kid had actually had the audacity to make him an exhibit in his own Shack?!?

“--Just remember not to annoy him,” he hears Soos finishing up, “Because you really won’t like him when he’s mad,” and that last bit would have had him freezing in place if he hadn’t been sitting still already.

‘ _Soos, you idiot!_ ’ he thinks.

“Why?” one of the kids on the tour asks.

“Because he gets really mad when he gets mad,” Soos tells them. “Heh.”

He mentally facepalms. ‘ _Great_ ,’ he thinks, because now he knows exactly what’s going to happen next.

And it does.

“Oh yeah?” one of the older teenagers taking the tour says. “What’s it gonna do? Huh?”

‘ _You brat_ ,’ he thinks, narrowing his eye at the kid as the kid shoves their face right up close to the bars of the cage. And _this_ is why he really doesn’t like most teenagers.

“Lookatit,” the kid taunts, grinning. “It’s so boring! Just some kind of stupid stuffed-up doll, like the rest of this junk!”

‘ _Oh, that’s it!!_ ” he thinks with a mental snarl, arms slack at his sides but his hands slowly curling into fists, ‘ _Nobody disses the Shack exhibits and gets away with it, nobody!_ ’

And now he has the burning desire to _teach this kid a lesson_.

He sits there, glaring at this kid, with his back against the bars of his cage and he _wants_ to, he _so_ wants to! _He wants_.

And then he realizes -- **why not?** Soos had put him in here, for cryin’ out loud. And Soos knew darn well what should and shouldn’t be said on a Mystery Tour like this -- Soos _had_ to have known what was going to happen!

Stanley Pines would _absolutely_ scare the bejeezus out of this snot-nosed kid for this behavior, on his tour. And Bill Cipher, well, that triangle wouldn’t take guff from nobody, now, would he? He’d lose his temper right away!

_\--It doesn’t really matter **who** he is right now, because either of him would be doing the exact same thing._

So he does it.

\--He leaps forward in a flash, arms outstretched, fingers in claw-shapes, and screams out at the top of his… _whatever_ he has instead of lungs: “ _ **RRRAAAAAARRRGH!**_ ”

And of course the kid screams bloody murder and tries to jump backwards away from him, tripping and falling ass-over-teakettle.

It’s all he can do not to start laughing in satisfaction and glee, but he doesn’t -- because that would really just spoil it, and he knows better. He’s _much_ better at this than that!

So instead he stays floating at the near set of bars, almost plastered up against them, and with his little pipecleaner arms thrust out between the bars, he keeps glaring and making clawing motions at the kid, growling, and does the same at some of the other younger tourists too when they flinch.

“Oh, no,” he hears Soos say, in the handyman’s usual voice. “You have angered the triangle guy! There is only one way to appease him.”

‘ _Yesssss_ ,’ he thinks, still making clawing motions with one hand, while grasping at the bars with the other. ‘ _Yes-yes-yes! Do it! DO IT!_ ’

And then Soos, in true Mr. Mystery fashion, extorts those dumb tourists for nearly all they’re worth.

\-- _Nearly_ , because getting them to buy Mystery Shack paraphernalia in the Shack’s gift shop is the next best thing to free advertising for the Shack. It’s always good to get about a three-to-one split of ‘extras’ versus ‘hard sales’, not counting the ticket sales to begin with.

And then Soos covers over his cage again with the ‘mysterious magic calming cloth’ to ‘pacify the triangle guy’ and leads the tourists out into the gift shop to buy just that paraphernalia. He’s the last stop at the end of the Mystery Shack tour.

...Well, of course he is! Who or what could ever top _that!_

Once he hears the sounds of the last tourist quickly shuffling out of the room die down, and the door to the gift shop slam, he’s not growling more and more quietly under his breath as the ‘magic’ cloth ‘calms’ him, he’s floating in circles and not even trying to hold in the giggles anymore.

Because that had been so _FUN!_ He can’t remember the last time he’s felt this good, it has to have been--

Years. It’s been years since he’s felt this good.

He doesn’t feel the least bit grey anymore. He just feels… _useful_.

...Huh. How about that. He can still be useful.

\---

It takes him a bit to calm down, and then a bit more to get himself sitting back down at the back of the cage.

The magic circle in the bottom of the birdcage _really_ wants to keep him centered and floating. He sort of has to take a ‘running float’ and grab at the bars, then _pull_ himself down, hand-over-hand until he reaches the very bottom, where the lifting push of it seems to cut out when he touches the ‘floor’ of the cage.

He knows the schedule. And he knows Soos. Soos doesn’t and won’t try the taunt every time -- only every fourth tour at most, and generally only when the kids are tossing out a _lot_ of guff.

There are going to be six more tours to go through that day, and he decides he’s going to try something a little different for each one. Variations on a pattern.

It’s a little more challenging than he expects, since the cloth over his cage is actually pretty heavy, heavy enough to muffle both sound and light almost completely. So, he does sort of a cross between feeling the energy of the room before the ‘curtain’ goes up, and cold-reading the crowd.

The ‘slowly-floating upwards and forward with arms and legs dangling loosely and then opening his eye’ way of doing things seems to come across as very, very creepy, if he gauges the reactions of the saps watching him correctly. He really likes that.

He changes it up a bit with how quickly he does each of those things during what parts of Soos’s speech, even trying out a shark-like back-and-forth ‘swim’ inside the cage while watching those outside of it without blinking, arms crossed behind his back. Funnily enough, it gives the adults the shivers more than the teens, and just leaves all the small kids transfixed and bright-eyed staring at him while not afraid in the slightest.

(...Maybe he reminds them of a bright-colored tropical fish? The kids obviously don’t know any better.)

On the last tour, though, he takes a chance and tries lying flat, front-face-down on the bottom of the cage, below the lip of the bottom rim -- he really is flatter than flat -- and doesn’t move at all when the cloth gets ripped off of the cage.

He can’t see, so he waits and listens carefully while Soos gives the whole ‘triangle guy’ spiel, and waits some more until he hears a hesitant, yet entirely expected, “But where is he?” and the tentative shuffling of feet forward… and then he shoves himself up.

The circle does the rest.

\--He _pops_ up, faster-than-fast, into the center of the cage, spinning in place, arms and legs all akimbo, and yells out: “BOO!”

The kids all scream, of course, and then those same kids _laugh_ when he stabilizes and gives them all more of a two-handed-finger-waggle than a scary-clawing-motion, with a very clearly-fake “RAAWR!”

He follows it up with a “HAHA! --I say RAAWR!” arms and legs flailing out at all sides, and gets some downright happy giggles out of the lot of them.

He kind of likes the immediate wide-eyed looks that puts on the adults’ faces, too, the hands that come up to cover smiling mouths next.

He can practically taste the shocked, excited, happy feelings saturating the air of the room, as that last tour group slowly makes its way out. And the sentiment lingers even after they’ve gone, making the room feel even brighter and more pleasant than it had been before.

He spins in place and hums, and then slowly drifts downwards, then pulls himself the rest of the way down to sit down.

He realizes with a bit of surprise that Soos forgot to put the cloth back on over him after that final tour.

\---

Soos comes back after awhile, and he sits in the bottom of the cage, listening to Soos hum “Do dee do, sweeping up the Shack, do dee do.” He’s content to just sit there, to close his eye and just listen, to be absently ignored as Soos finishes cleaning up and taking care of the exhibits.

He didn’t expect to be one of the latter, though.

But it turns out that he is. He blinks his eye open again when he hears Soos stroll on over after the sweeping is done, after Soos has put the broom away and finished dusting as well, and he realizes that Soos is smiling. At him.

“You’re lookin’ better, triangle guy,” he’s told, and Soos sounds… almost _happy_ about it. “Less grey, more yellow.”

He blinks down at himself and realizes that Soos is right.

“You wanna stay in here for the night? Or come back inside? Yes? No?”

He looks up at Soos and feels… uncertain. He doesn’t say anything.

What he does do is glance over at the cloth that is supposed to be covering his cage.

“Haha, okay triangle dude. Maybe tomorrow then. Or not?” Soos says, easygoing about the whole thing. There’s really no pressure there, as usual for the ex-handyman, and it’s almost soothing to him -- that some things, at least, are still the same, no matter what.

Soos picks up the cloth, humming to himself, and with a flick of the wrist, the dark blue material flares out beautifully in the air, slowly falls, and settles over everything.

...He realizes that he can actually tell when Soos has left the room, when the lights have been turned off, even from under the thick cloth blanket covering that muffles all light and sound. Because it feels different, somehow. Quieter.

Almost peaceful.

He doesn’t sleep, and the grey doesn’t really come back. He can almost feel the edges of it trying to sneak up on him, though, but… one thought keeps it completely at bay:

He was useful today.

_Him._ Not Stanley Pines. Not Bill Cipher… well, not _really_. The ‘triangle guy.’ Him.

He wasn’t a screw-up, and he didn’t do anything wrong. In fact, as near as he can tell, he did a lot of things _right_.

He’d helped out Soos.

And it actually starts kind of a slow-burn in him. Stanley Pines, the dumb, useless screw-up, _isn’t here_. He isn’t helping out. He isn’t even here for the kids, this summer, and what kind of guy is he to _not_ do that for them?

Being angry at Sixer and, what, leaving _Sixer_ all alone, when Sixer doesn’t want him gone? That’s one thing. Maybe he can almost understand that… well, okay, **no** , not really. --But the kids are a whole different matter. If Stanley Pines isn’t here for them -- and Stanley Pines _isn’t_ \-- then the man is _worse_ than a screw-up.

If that’s what Stanley Pines is really like, then he doesn’t want to be Stanley Pines.

He’d rather be Bill Cipher, the dumb demonic triangle, and take his chances there.

Heck, he’s a triangle anyway, can’t help that, so _why not_ go with it?

Sixer might hate him, and the kids might too -- and he knows he can’t do _anything_ about either of those two things, they’re just the facts. They hate him now, and that just won’t change whether he’s Stan stuck in a triangle or Bill Cipher himself, and he’s pretty sure it never will. He’s been well-and-truly kicked out of the Pines family for good. End-stop. Move along. Move _on_.

But Soos… doesn’t hate anybody or anyone. And at least Soos…

...He might not be able to have the same sort of relationship with his ex-employee anymore, but at least he can help Soos out from the sidelines. At least he can still be a little bit useful, helping the kid out with the Shack.

And it was fun today. It was fun.

So fine. He’s Bill Cipher. Fine with him.

As far as he’s concerned, at least that means that _he_ gets to be the one to decide when this weird-apocalypse is gonna happen again, and what happens to Sixer and the kids as part of that. Soos and Wendy, too.

And in the meantime… he can have some fun with it, right? Because why not? Isn’t that what the demonic triangle was supposed to be all about? Weirdness and madness and big parties? Breaking out and breaking loose and breaking free of all the rules and restrictions and anything that looked like it could chain him down, escaping the confines of a cage meant to hold him and doing it _with style?_

Not just breaking all the rules, but having a boatload of fun while doing it?

Just… doing whatever he wanted, so long as it was fun?

And to him, that actually sounds… really, _really_ nice.

(And not all that far off from anything Stanley’s ever wanted anyway. ...Up until he’d gotten kicked out of the house at seventeen, that is, and found himself scrambling for a place and a life and a home and a family ever since.)

Maybe it’s time to be a little selfish for once. To do what _he_ wants to do, instead of what he feels like he has to do _right now_ or else risk losing everything, over and over again.

Yes. Sure. _Why not?_

...And _why not_ start with the Shack itself?

Bill feels the corners of his eye turn up in a smile. And he thinks...

‘ _Oh yeah. This is gonna be… **FUN**_.’

\---


End file.
